Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

Yan left her and walked to the corner of the room; she couldn’t see what he was doing but she heard the slide of a heavy glass lid being opened and the musty smell in the room intensified. He moved slowly back towards her carrying a huge snake coiled around his arms. Its girth was as thick as a man’s leg. He carried it looped over his shoulders and across his arms, walking slowly with the weight of it. Its head rose in the air as it smelt the room with its tongue.

‘Now this is my interpretation of a well-known classic: three blind mice. But this is one crippled rat and it isn’t the farmer’s wife coming after him, it’s my lovely Miranda.’

Ebony breathed hard as the snake’s head appeared over the side of the box. It was watching both her and the rat.

‘Stay still – I would – because she gets very jumpy when she’s hungry. She’ll strike at anything, even me. She has scores of sharp-as-needles teeth. The wound on my hand that you thought was made by a staple gun was actually Miranda’s teeth.’

Ebony stayed still, slowed her breathing and watched. She felt the snake’s body against her own as it dropped into the coffin with her and she sensed its tongue against her legs as it slithered its way slowly along. The rat didn’t seem to know what was about to happen to it. It edged closer to the snake as if curious. Miranda moved across Ebony’s legs, slowly inching its way towards the rat until their faces were almost touching and then she made her strike. She bit into the neck of the squealing rat and wrapped her coils around it as it fought to escape. Yan didn’t move – he was watching Ebony. She could feel it – she had to play his game now if she had any chance of surviving this and helping Danielle. She turned her head away, disgusted, and refused to look at the rat whose feet paddled in the air at the crack of its spine.

‘Please let me go, Yan. I can help you. I’ll tell them you were kind to me – please don’t kill me this way.’ Yan smiled. He was pleased to see Ebony so upset.

‘Take a good look, Ebony. Every time the rat exhales she constricts tighter; imagine her squeezing the life out of you.’ Ebony shuddered.

‘Please, Yan. Please stop this.’

She watched as Miranda opened her mouth wide and began taking the rat inside.

‘My game. My rules. I say when it’s over for you and Danielle. Stay here. Don’t move. You move and Miranda will strike.’

‘Please don’t leave me with it. Yan, please…’

Ebony heard his footsteps as he left. She listened to them outside the door and counted his steps. She knew he’d gone into the room where Danielle was. After a few minutes she heard the door open again and his footsteps climbing stairs.

Ebony didn’t dare breathe as she lay listening to the cracking of the rat’s bones and the sound of a door opening to the upper floor. He was planning to kill Danielle on the next floor of the house. If he’d left the door unlocked then Ebony could make it.

She looked back at Miranda. The rat’s body was slowly disappearing and now half of it was already jammed into Miranda’s throat. It was time to make her move. Ebony began biting the binds on her wrist.

She looked at Miranda. The snake was watching her, but she reckoned it wouldn’t be able to spit the rat out and that gave her time to work on her bonds. Ebony wiggled her legs slowly out of the crushing weight of Miranda’s coils and then she began working at her wrists against the sharp ends of the catches on the locks that held the coffin closed. All the time keeping her eye on the snake’s head, she gently pushed its coils off her. Ebony knelt and applied her weight until the rope began to fray and give way.

By now only the rat’s tail was still showing from Miranda’s mouth. Ebony stepped carefully out of the box and made a circuit of the room. It was a dug-out basement area that had been crudely extended. It had low ceilings and bare rafters, concrete floors. The basement had been used as a wine cellar at one time. It was barely lit. There were shelves still there where the wine rested. She walked cautiously forward. There was a crudely dug pit to her left. She peered inside. It smelt of urine and earth. On the far side of the room she found Miranda’s empty tank.

Ebony moved slowly backwards away from the tank and found a sturdy metal pole, with a hook on the end – a snake hook – then she crept towards the door. She watched Miranda drop off the side of the coffin and onto the floor.

Robbo was in his office with Jeanie, Pam and James. He sat despondently and stared at the screen. He was trying every way to reconnect with Ebony’s GPS but it was dead.

‘Christ almighty, why isn’t it working? Come on, Ebb – talk to me.’

‘Out of range or inside a building?’ said Jeanie as she put a hand on Robbo’s shoulder. He looked up at her, exasperated.

‘I’d like to think so, Jeanie, but I think it’s more likely Hawk’s found it.’

‘We have to keep trying, Robbo. Ebb won’t give up. She’s a fighter.’

‘She’ll need to be, Jeanie.’ Robbo looked exhausted.

James stood to retrieve something from the printer.

‘I have a list of Yan’s closest friends now,’ he said to Robbo. ‘The ones he talks to most on Facebook.’ He gathered up the printed pages. ‘I have their addresses and phone numbers.’

‘Good – start phoning, and make a list of any you can’t get hold of and I’ll send officers around there. One of them must know where he lives.’

‘Can’t we trace his address through his father and the details of the house ownership?’ Jeanie asked Pam.

Pam shook her head. ‘I’m trying but I’m having no luck so far. I don’t think he had his father’s name. I don’t think they were married.’

‘What about his birth certificate?’

‘It gives his father as Joseph White, but I can’t find out any more about him. I’m trying every angle I can think of,’ Pam said. She looked fraught.

Jeanie smiled at her. ‘I know you are… we’re all so worried but we need to stay calm and focused.’ Pam nodded.

‘How’s Carter getting on, Jeanie?’ asked Robbo.

‘He’s throwing everything at it that he can think of. We have a hundred officers walking around the streets off Upper Street doing house to house.’

‘Yan’s not going to answer the door though, is he?’

‘No, but they might get lucky – see something suspicious. They’re also looking for vans and checking out the owners with vehicle registration. We’ve even got a heat-seeking helicopter up looking for the snake tank in case it’s on the upper floor.’

Robbo rubbed his face with his hands.

‘We need to put more officers out there. No squad cars, we need plain-clothes officers out looking for her. We don’t want to scare him into finishing the game too soon, before we have time to find her.’

‘Is that what you think will happen?’

Robbo nodded. ‘He is not going to hand over control of the game or have it taken away from him. He won’t allow that to happen. He’ll end it first. End it on his own terms. Ebony is his pièce de résistance . He’s had this worked out for some time. I can’t imagine he hasn’t thought of everything.’

Ebony crept past the room where Jenny’s corpse was hanging. The corridor took a sharp right before an old stairwell and a door to the next level. Her feet creaked on every step. At the top of the stairwell she turned the door handle and stepped into a kitchen. It hadn’t been updated since the Fifties. She could hear music playing. She heard Yan talking as she crept forwards.

Yan was humming to the music as he prepared Danielle’s face. He applied a layer of thick foundation to her pale skin. He drew red circles on her cheeks and painted blue eye-shadow in a block above her eyes. He worked methodically, slowly.